The SSA did not respond to a WIRED request on which DOGE agents work inside the agency.
At a meeting on Tuesday, the administrator of the United States Doge Service, Amy Gleason, told staff that engineers affiliated with Musk and some workers inherited from the USDS would head to the SSa to improve the “proof of identity”, according to sources that were in the meeting. The American service Doge is a permanent brand change in American digital service. Identity test is the process that SSA uses to identify that users are what they say that they are in order to access their advantages. The process includes recording with identity applications such as the own login.gov or third party services such as Id.me.
At a meeting last week, According to the Washington PostDudek, the acting commissioner of the SSA, told staff that the “Doges” were actually in charge of daily operations at the agency and “were going to make mistakes”. He also clearly indicated that he had been in direct contact with the White House.
“I work for the president,” said Dudek, according to a longer recording of the meeting Obtained by Propublica. “I need to do what the president tells me to do. I had to make difficult choices, choices I didn’t agree with, but the president wanted, and I did. »»
In February, Dudek described the plans to fire 7,000 employees at the SSA and close more than half of the agency’s regional offices, while confirming that many of the SSA senior executives left. This week, the agency would have Abandoned the idea of fully abandoning the telephone service for customers after the Washington Post reported the plan.
The SSA is home to a very complex system built on a technology of decades and contains some of the most sensitive personal information held in the American government. The threat posed by DOGE engineers making mistakes within these systems, according to experts, is enormous.
Martin O’malley, former SSA commissioner, warned last weekFollowing the incursion of Doge, that in a few months, the SSA system could “collapse” and the recipients would see “an interruption of the advantages”. This warning was repeated by Flick, who wrote in his affidavit that the lack of knowledge of DOGE on SSA systems, “combined with the significant loss of expertise, because more and more disturbance of the agency, seriously care that the ASA programs will continue to function and function without having trouble.”
“It is a valid fear that personally identifiable information is exfiltrated or the source code with without controls and rigor required,” said Wired John McGing, a former SSa employee who worked at the agency for almost four decades.
In addition, DOGE imposed a $ 1 expenditure limit for federal credit cards, which led to certain regional SSA offices encountering problems to buy basic supplies, including paper and toner, according to details shared with an SSA employee.
“We started the rationing document,” said the source. “People like to ask for four copies of their letter to verify advantages. We gave them one and told them to make their own copies. »»
The provision of sign language interpreters for SSA meetings was also interrupted due to the $ 1 expenditure limit. “We have to return to this client and tell him that we cannot provide an interpreter, even if everything on our website says that we will provide this,” said the source, citing an incident that occurred this week.
SSA staff are also now unable to order death certificates, which are used to check whether someone in the system is dead or not, according to an e-mail examined by Wired.
The source added that the office is not able to pay the company which shouts the mountains of the documents it imprints daily, which makes it fear that lots of paper with very sensitive personally identifiable information can soon be left in the office.
Timothy Marchman contributed the reports.
